Church defrocks minister who performed gay son’s wedding in Hull

United Methodist church officials defrocked a pastor from central Pennsylvania on Thursday who violated religious doctrine by officiating his son’s gay wedding and then, after being suspended, defiantly refused to resign.

United Methodist church officials defrocked a pastor on Thursday who performed a wedding ceremony for his gay son in Hull in 2007.

The Rev. Frank Schaefer from central Pennsylvania was stripped of his clergy credential after meeting briefly with the Board of Ordained Ministry at church offices in suburban Philadelphia.

Schaefer had vowed that he wouldn’t voluntarily surrender his credentials as ordered by a religious jury.

Church spokesman John Coleman said officials had no choice but to terminate Schaefer’s ministerial office.

But Pastor Will Green at St. Nicholas United Methodist Church in Hull, countered that church officials had a choice and went too far in defrocking Schaefer. “I am very ashamed they decided they to act the way they did. They didn’t have to do that. This is a deliberate decision,” he said Thursday.

Green said that the Methodist leadership is harming gays and lesbians in the church. “I am sad just to see (the church) falling apart,” he added.

On Thursday, Schaefer left the Methodist church offices without commenting.

Last month, a church jury suspended Schaefer for 30 days for performing the 2007 wedding of his gay son in Massachusetts, where same-sex unions are legal.

Schaefer’s son, Tim Schaefer, is a member of St. Nicholas in Hull.

Although the Methodist church accepts gay and lesbian members, it rejects the practice of homosexuality as “incompatible with Christian teaching” and bars clergy from performing same-sex unions.

The issue has split the nation’s largest mainline Protestant denomination amid a rapid shift in public opinion. Same-sex marriage will soon be legal in 16 states, and opinion polls show that a majority of Americans now support it. Hundreds of Methodist ministers have publicly rejected church doctrine on homosexuality, and some of them face discipline for presiding over same-sex unions.

Critics say those pastors are sowing division within the church and ignoring the church’s democratic decision-making process. The denomination’s top legislative body, the 1,000-member General Conference, reaffirmed the church’s 40-year-old policy on gays at its last worldwide meeting in 2012.

Jurors who convicted Schaefer said he should use the suspension time to decide whether he could uphold the church’s Book of Discipline. If he decided he could not, he was told to give up his pulpit in Lebanon by Thursday.

Schaefer gave his answer publicly Monday during a news conference in Philadelphia, saying “I cannot voluntarily surrender my credentials because I am a voice now for many – for tens of thousands – of LGBT members in our church.”